Bottled Aggression
by Lucinda
Summary: slightly AU, dark and angsty. What can contain Sabertooth? And who would dare to attempt it? Not a relationship fic.


author: Lucinda  
  
rating: pg 13-16  
  
main characters: Vic Creed, Sinister  
  
disclaimer: Nobody from Marvel belongs to me.  
  
distribution: please ask first.  
  
note: I have no idea where this came from. It's dark, its angsty, it's probably entirely and completely AU. Comic-verse.  
  
  
  
He'd been traveling, not so much going to somewhere in particular as just... going. The people near him had started to notice that he wasn't getting any older, so there had been no reason to stay. He'd meandered across the border, going south into America. The beer was... well, there was plentiful beer, and he had no trouble finding a good fight now and then to keep the boredom back.  
  
Sabertooth had no idea why someone was following him. He'd only caught a few glimpses of the man, someone that looked like a thin pale man, dressed in a dark suit. He seemed unhealthily pale, and smelled like chemicals. And his scent kept being there, lurking, following him.  
  
The idea made him angry. Hadn't there been enough scientists when he'd been in that place in the snow? The compound where his past had been stripped from him? That whole mess had left him not only with painful and confusing dreams but a deep distrust of doctors and scientists. He was sure that the pale man could only be more trouble.  
  
He started trying to loose the pale man, to go places that would be too dangerous, too rough for some pale scientist to follow. But he would still catch that scent, like dank chemicals, tainting the air.  
  
Nothing seemed to be working, so he decided to loose the city. He'd slipped out under the cover of darkness, moving swiftly through fields of crops. He had a bad feeling, nothing that he could put into coherent words. Just a feeling of approaching danger, something bad about to happen.  
  
There was a faint pop from the left and rear, and then a soft thud and the sound of something hissing, like an opened gas canister... A harsh, bitter scent filled the air, something that reminded him of mustard and tears... It caught in his mouth, choking him, filled his lungs with fluid and clawed at his eyes until they became swollen shut, and dark unconsciousness claimed him.  
  
His next sensation was floating in something cold and wet, his body feeling stiff and numb. Something was wrong... where was he? What had happened to his clothing? There was a mask over his mouth and nose, feeding him air that smelled of rubber, of something with a bitter copper tang, and a faint hint of mold. Sound was curiously muffled, but there was the faint sounds of someone pacing to the front of him. He could feel needles in his arms, tubes going into his body... Memories stirred and howled in protest.  
  
His eyes stung when he opened them, a sure sign that whatever he was in wasn't water. He was trapped in a tube of glass, slightly wider than his shoulders, his feet floating over the bottom, the whole of it seemingly filled with the liquid. Outside appeared to be some sort of medical or scientific place, with jars and vials and beakers, and burners with things simmering over them. Shelves held more bottles, and there was a row of small vials sitting in a rack that rested on a block of ice.  
  
The pale man was there, pacing in front of him, apparently muttering to himself, the liquid keeping Sabertooth from hearing the words from the pale man's lips. He knew that this man had done this to him, brought him here. Lips curled back into a snarl, he raised his hands, muscles sluggish in responding. Instead of the forceful pounding that he'd intended, his hands came to rest on the inside of the glass with a soft thump, the impact barely jarring the bones of his hand.  
  
Had there been a noise? Had there been something... the pale man turned, looking at Sabertooth, his eyes burning like coals as his lips pulled back over sharp teeth in a cruel parody of a smile. The pale man's words sent a cold tendril of fear along his spine.  
  
"You are mine now."  
  
Somehow, he'd been taken to hell, or back into the depths of his nightmares. No food was given to him, the tubes being judged sufficient to offer enough meager nourishment to keep him alive. Occasionally, on some time table known only to the pale man named Sinister, he would be pulled from the bottle, placed on a cold metal table for 'testing'. He would be opened up, his insides examined or prodded... strange things spilled onto his flesh, things that made him snarls and howl threats and curses. Every time he was pulled out, he struggled to attack, to rip Sinister into shreds, to kill and destroy...  
  
But his muscles were always sluggish, slow as turtles and as stiff as November mud. Hunger clawed at his guts, almost as painful as the chemicals spilled by Sinister. But that wasn't the extent of it. Sinister kept trying to break his will, to remake him into his obedient slave.  
  
That part wasn't working at least.  
  
Apparently, Sinister decided that he wouldn't be able to break him. That the Sabertooth would not obey, even if the pain and hunger had made him half mad, confined in this bottle, helpless, powerless.  
  
He awoke, at first puzzled by the fact that there was a wall to his left. Then, it slowly occurred to him that his jar had been moved, into a different room, one filled with three rows of jars almost like his own, but those were filled with a different fluid, a fluid colored like blood in water. There were small somethings in the tubes, little lumps about the size of an eyeball, just floating there... He tried to count the jars, his thoughts slow and fuzzy. Three rows... but he couldn't quite determine if they were rows of five, or maybe six? Seven?  
  
Each of the other jars had something at the base, something with switches and bright lights that glowed red and yellow and white. Something was very wrong about those jars... But it was so hard to think now, the drugs that flowed into him through the needles and tubes not only slowing his muscles but his mind as well. Time seemed to be compressed, or else he would close his eyes and wake up days later.  
  
Occasionally, when he was awake Sinister would be there, checking over the jars, looking at the bases, making notes about the floating things inside. They didn't look like eye sized blobs anymore. Now, they looked like babies, each floating inside a man sized jar... When he was awake, he would watch them, noticing how they would move, wiggling, squirming, sometimes almost swimming. There was something important about all of those growing babies in their jars. Why did they all look so much alike? Was it just his general lack of time around babies?   
  
Sinister seemed so pleased with the jars, smiling in almost glee as he examined the growing crop of babies. They were starting to get hair now, pale blond locks on tiny skulls...  
  
"Yes, grow fast and strong, kitten boys. I will have uses for all of you. My creatures, obedient to my will as your parent was not."  
  
Sabertooth frowned, hearing the words of Sinister, struggling to make sense of them. The babies... kitten boys? Their parent... He could almost grasp the thought, but it slithered away like a fish from a net. Why were the babies in jars? Growing children needed space, and food...  
  
Slowly, he became convinced that he was loosing his mind, whatever shreds of sanity he had left. All of the bottled boys looked alike, all of them wearing his face. Surely he had fallen into madness...  
  
He tried to rage, to beat against the glass and howl in frustration, in fear, in despair at this eternal hell... He was not meant for this bottled hell, trapped in a jar like a fly in amber. But there was nothing that he could do.  
  
Sabertooth could only float in his jar, watching the rows of red fluid in front of him, watching as tiny blobs formed, grew to be his doubles, men with his face and no sanity in their eyes, who vanished again, endlessly repeating.  
  
end Bottled Aggression. 


End file.
